Puget Sound Liberals Weekly Newsletter #71

Enhancing Freedom, Opportunity and Cooperation in Puget Sound and Beyond

Through informing and networking Liberals and Liberal Organizations.

Our vision is hundreds of thousands of well-informed Puget Sound Liberals working together.

May 25, 2007

Calendar of Events

Friday, May 25 at 6:30 PM at Ann Rolio’s home (16109 SE 5^th Street) – Lake Hills Liberals Salon, including an Egyptian gourmet buffet, followed by a presentation and discussion about Blogging by Andrew Villeneuve. RSVP to davthom@att.net.

Friday, June 1 at 5:30 PM at Qwest Field Event Center’s WaMu Theatre (800 Occidental Avenue South, Seattle) – Welcome Barack Obama. $25 and up paid in advance. For more information.

Saturday, June 2 at 7 PM at Traditions Fair Trade Café (300 – 5^th Avenue NW, Olympia – 4 episodes of the Reclaiming Democracy Show, including interviews with Antonia Juhasz, John Perkins, Bruce Gagnon and David Korten, followed by discussion. For more information: JacquiAFD@comcast.net.

Saturday, June 9 at 6:30 PM at Columbia City Theatre (4916 Rainier Ave S, Seattle) – Progressive Majority Casino Night Fundraiser, $50 and up. RSVP

Thursday, June 14 at 6:30 – 8:30 every other week for 10 sessions at Traditions Café (300 – 5^th Avenue SW, Olympia – Study group concerning Challenging Corporate Power and Asserting People’s Rights. Sponsored by Alliance for Democracy. For more information and to register. To download study packets.

Quote of the Week

It’s not what we don’t know that hurts: it’s what we know that ain’t so. Will Rogers

Table of Contents *** featured articles

Puget Sound Liberals

About Puget Sound Liberals

Liberals and Democrats

Comparing Blogs and Newsletters ***

Who Are Those Conservatives? ***

Where Will Democrats Win in 2008?

Nation and World

Give Peace a Chance ***

Limiting Pork

Stock Market Up, Economic Growth Down Why? ***

American Public Embraces Oil Independence

Iraqi Oil More Important Than Withdrawal from Iraq? ***

Bush Administration Fails to Support Our Troops

Bush May Veto Hate Crimes Bill

Rube-Goldberg Mongrel Hybrid Immigration Reform ***

State and Local

Senator Rodney Tom’s Anti-Crime Bills Are Now Law

How Civil Liberties Faired in 2007 Legislative Session**

Why Legislators Support Private Campaign Financing

Influencing the Eastside Reporter

Our Liberal Spirit

New Souls ***

Recommended Books

Macro-Economic Analysis and History

Lake Hills Liberals

Vigiling to Bring Our Troops Home Alive

Our Political Priorities

· Fair Elections and Open Government

· Fair Taxes and Competent Spending

· Investment for Productivity

· Quality Health, Education, Jobs, Income and Retirement

· Environmental Protection and Energy Independence

· Personal Security and Equal Rights

· International Cooperation and Leadership

Conservatives oppose all of these.

Recommendations

· Darcy Burner for U.S. Congress, 8^th District

· Alec Fisken for Seattle Port Commission

· Both Gael Tarleton and Jack Block, Jr. for Port

Commission against their incumbent opponent

· Dana Stober for Kent City Council, Position 3.

· Keri Andrews for Bellevue City Council

· Brian Conlin for Redmond City Council

· Support Our Grocery Workers

Advocacy Groups and Candidates

Sample Organization or Candidate Notice

Available free to any organization or candidate who stimulate many of their members to become politically informed through joining our Puget Sound Liberals. Published each week until updated. For example:

Do Good Organization or Candidate: Our vision is doing good. To realize our vision, our mission is helping all. Our major programs are increasing awareness, organizing and acting. Present activities include protesting evil, proclaiming good and helping people. We invite you to the following events: Leader Dunking Fundraiser, Planning session. Picketing. For more information and to join us, visit our website: www.DoMuchGood.org.

Liberals and Democrats

Comparing Blogs and Newsletters

Blogs are public. Newsletters are private, although they may be easily passed on to others besides they ones who receive them.

Blogs are like conversations. People express their commentary, then others respond, and others respond to the responses. And so on. Bloggers refer to threads which are chains of conversation. Newsletters may publish a few letters to the editor. (We publish all letters we receive that the sender wants published.) But Newsletters are not like conversations. They allow much less response to their contents. They are much more top-down.

Over time, blogs are read by different people. Few readers follow them closely such that they could receive a continuing series of training exercises. Newsletters have much more constant readerships. So they may offer training.

Blogs most commonly provide commentaries on current events. Some of these commentaries are educational. Some will educate us about particular subjects. But they do not offer comprehensive training. You can read many commentaries on the Daily Kos or Northwest Progressive Institute Blogs without obtaining a comprehensive understanding of politics, liberal politics or other subject matter.

Newsletters many similarly just report and comment on events. But a newsletter may also provide more comprehensive training. Our Puget Sound Liberals newsletter is dedicated to educating our readers about our Liberal values, history, priorities, policies, and political strategies with respect to realizing our values. Our website assists our efforts to inform you, beginning with our boot camp series of commentaries.

Besides trying to comprehensively educate you, we try by example to illustrate how to interpret news events. We delight in spotting patterns and trends which are not or only scarcely reported by most other media. Examples are our recent commentaries on how Conservatives oppose all of our major Liberal priorities and how rapidly our United States is losing influence over other countries. Other countries and groups of countries are going their own ways regardless of the wishes of our administration. Earlier, we reported in depth about the dilemma that Democratic legislators are posing for Republicans who must go along with the popular liberal legislation or oppose it, so that they either alienate their base or endanger their 2008 election chances of victory.

Newsletters, at least this one, attempt to offer carefully thought out, researched commentaries. Some bloggers do the same. But many do not, expressing trivial, inaccurate or primarily emotional comments. Blogs provide obvious benefits as a convenient way for large number of people to converse and watch conversations. So do email lists which are simply private blogs.

Newsletters provide quite different benefits. I have been repeatedly asked to blog, but have generally declined. I am more an educator than a conversationalist. I am more dedicated to comprehensive training, than to exchanging opinions.

I also want Puget Sound Liberals to be easily able to communicate, associate and cooperate with each other. I have proposed establishing an email list, but no one has expressed an interest. An alternative would be a bulletin board which has the advantage of not being intrusive. You don’t get all those emails, although email lists can also be set up so that you only get digests or go to the web to view messages. More likely, we can simply use existing northwest blogs. The major disadvantage of blogs is that they are public. They allow Conservatives to listen in and participate. Our Puget Sound Liberals wants to avoid educating and being distracted by Conservatives.

Who Are Those Conservatives?

Our website boot camp contains an analysis of who various types of Conservatives are. They typically come from homogeneous rural, small town and exurban neighborhoods, which have little ethnic and religious diversity and their gays and poor people are in the closet or have left for greener pastures. When they express America’s liberal values of equal freedom and opportunity for all, they really mean for all Americans like the people in their neighborhood. They have little tolerance and compassion for those who differ. In addition, their neighborhoods don’t apparently need the government regulations and programs necessary in neighborhoods with denser more heterogeneous populations.

Conservatives have long favored less government, less regulations, and less taxes, even though their areas are subsidized by obtaining more tax revenues than they contribute (due to their extra senatorial power). From the 1950’s McCarthyism and before to the present, Conservatives have viewed and railed against urban based liberals as traitors to the type of America that they desire.

Washington is Becoming More Liberal

Nationally and within Washington State, the geographic correlation of urban-rural areas with Liberal-Conservative voting is obvious. As our population grows and becomes more urban, more areas become liberal, even in the South which due to nationalistic, religious and racial values has been our most Conservative area. Increased population, environmental concerns and gas prices will further increase our urban populations. Our Liberal future is promising, especially if we can politically mobilize our Liberals

Our eastside is rapidly urbanizing and electing more Democrats. The same may happen in Spokane. If we can register Hispanics in the Yakima valley and get them to vote, we can expect that Democratic Congresspersons will replace the current Republican ones. We need a continuous 49 legislative district strategy to extend and hasten the conversion of Republican held political offices to Democratic ones. Our Democratic legislative district organizations in areas which are most Democratic need to support those in less Democratic legislative districts. Even when we don’t win races, we force Republicans to spend their resources defending their turf. One of the reasons that Democrats nationally did so well in 2006 is that Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy forced them use resources in their turf that could otherwise have been used in more competitive races.

Let’s Hasten the Process

It is fun to ride the tides of history. Let us create a state Democratic political plan, which contains strategies for each legislative and congressional district. Then let’s act as a statewide team to enact these strategies. Let’s eliminate Republicans as a political presence in Washington. It can be done if we have the commitment. Why settle for less? Why be distracted by worries about protecting our office holders? We need to be able to concentrate on extending freedoms and opportunities for all our citizens.

Where Will Democrats Win in 2008?

Democrats are expected to continue to gain congressional seats everywhere but in the south, although the gerrymandered districts in the Midwest may slow the process. With only extremely conservative congresspersons from conservative districts remaining, Republicans will become less competitive nationally. They may be reduced to a southern regional party, with little hope of regaining national strength.

Our presidential candidate’s best chance to pick up more electoral seats may be in the mountain states, especially Arizona and Colorado. This may be due to increasing populations concentrated in their urban areas, many of them coming from liberal California. For More.

Nation and World

GIVE PEACE A CHANCE: WE CAN’T AFFORD NOT TO

By Patty Kuderer, National Communications Director The Peace Alliance, May 23, 2007

Last February HR 808, legislation to create a U.S. Department of Peace and Nonviolence, was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives. The bill already has 65 co-sponsors and a growing nationwide grassroots movement behind it, lead by The Peace Alliance, a nonpartisan, non-profit organization with volunteers active in all 50 states. If passed, this legislation will give state and local governments much-needed financial resources to reduce and prevent crime and violence.[i]

America’s main strategy for handling crime and violence – reacting after it occurs – is an ineffective and dangerous approach to what is rapidly becoming a public health issue of epidemic proportions. Police and public safety personnel on the front lines are stretched beyond capacity. Teachers now must prepare for disasters that include school shootings. Our courts are inundated with criminal cases and jails are already overcrowded. And we continue to build more prisons than schools. Indeed, if all it took was to build more prisons, impose harsher sentences, or maintain the strongest military in the world, the United States would have violence under control. Clearly we do not.

According to the most recent FBI Crime Statistics Report, we had nearly 1.4 million violent crimes in 2005. When you factor in that many violent crimes go unreported, this number becomes the minimum. And now consider this:

· 12 children per day lose their life to violence every day – that’s a Virginia Tech every three days.

· Domestic violence is the single greatest cause of injury to women.

· Youth suicide rates are 10 times higher than other industrialized nations.

· Homicide was the second leading cause of death for people ages 10-24 in 2001.

· In 1996 some 31,000 gangs were operating in about 4800 American cities and towns—and large cities claim that 72% of their school violence is attributable in part to gang activity.

· Seventeen percent of high school girls have been physically abused, and 12% have been abused sexually.

· Nearly 60% of boys who researchers classified as “bullies” in grades 6-9 were convicted of at least one crime by age 24. Even more dramatic, a full 40% were convicted of three or more crimes by that time.

All of this violence is costly. A 2004 World Health Organization report estimated the cost of interpersonal violence in the United States at $300 billion per year. (If you add in the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, that number more than doubles.) The health-related costs of rape, physical assault, stalking and homicide committed by intimate partners exceed $5.8 billion each year. Of that amount, nearly $4.1 billion are for direct medical and mental health care services, and nearly $1.8 billion are for the indirect costs of lost productivity or wages.

A Department of Peace and Nonviolence will create an infrastructure for peace that will partner with private organizations – local communities, social justice groups, churches, etc. – to lower crime rates efficiently and cost-effectively. It will take advantage of experts in peace building (many of whom live in the United States), available programs aimed at reducing crime and violence, and existing curricula to teach peer mediation and nonviolent conflict resolution skills and strategies to students in grades K – 12. Acting as a clearing house for “best practices models,” the Department of Peace will help fund, duplicate and spread effective crime- and violence-prevention programs throughout the country. New, innovative programs will be developed where there is a need.

Opponents of the bill claim a Department of Peace would duplicate efforts of the State and Defense Departments or that we don’t need another useless government bureaucracy. I agree we don’t need another “useless’ bureaucracy. But how about a department that maximizes efficiencies and existing resources by providing the governmental infrastructure needed to make peace a national priority? At this point in our nation’s history, there is no governmental department with peace building and the reduction of crime and violence as its sole focus. And there is no Cabinet member trained in nonviolent conflict resolution, allowing him or her to address the underlying needs of parties to the conflict and diffuse the tension before it erupts into violence. That is the view a Secretary of Peace would be called to articulate.

We have a Department of State, a Department of Defense, a Department of Homeland Security, so why not a Department of Peace? We currently allocate more than $400 billion per year to the Department of Defense, and estimates put the cost of the war in Iraq at upwards of $10 billion per month in addition. That’s a lot of money. A Department of Peace and Nonviolence will provide a coordinated, proactive approach to reducing and preventing violence in our homes, in our schools, in our communities, our nation, and throughout the world – and at a cost of about $8 billion per year. So, for less than one month of war we could get an entire year of peacebuilding. That’s a bargain by any definition. A lot of well-meaning people say we can’t afford peace; the reality is we can’t afford the alternatives.

To learn more about HR 808 and The Peace Alliance, please visit our website www.thepeacealliance.org.

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